Development of BeiDou: from Made in China to Service by China

The industry of the applications of BeiDou Navigation Satellite System has achieved a welcome development in recent years, as breakthroughs on core technologies are being made step by step and the integration of BeiDou industrial chain, which contains chips, board cards and platforms, is accelerating.

However, most companies within the BeiDou industry are for now remaining as low-level system integrators with their business stranded on selling and maintenance of navigational products. China’s market for BeiDou’s applications has not entered in the stage of sound development yet. Companies within this industry are still small-scale and unintegrated, while the industrial order is yet to be formed.

In order to change the current situation of chaotic wild growth of BeiDou application industry, and turn it towards sustainable growth, integration is in need. Yang Yuanxi, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and researcher of Beijing Satellite Navigation Center thinks that the future of BeiDou doesn’t lie in equipment and devices, but in services. He points out that the latter has a far brighter market prospective than the former one, of which approves Professor Cao Chong, leading expert of the GNSS and LBS Association of China (GLAC).

Professor Cao thinks that the BDS application industry should level up and upgrade, i.e. from “made in China” develop into “service by China”. That is to say, companies within the BeiDou application industry should, from providers of modules, machines and systems, transform into providers of government affairs services, business services and public services. In the future, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) should be integrated with Smart City, big data, Internet of Things, cloud computing, Mobile Internet and so on, so as to build an industry cluster of intelligent information, which is “service by China”.